Trump, Donald J

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      The Iowa State Fair Continues Friday, as Republican Candidates Seek a Moment

      by

      The butter cow is carved. The pork chops are prepped. And the candidates who weren’t at the Iowa State Fair on Thursday are on their way.Six candidates for the Republican presidential nomination will be circulating through the fairgrounds on Friday, as they try to woo voters months ahead of this crucial first nominating contest.A day at the fair — one of the largest in the nation — has long been one of Iowa’s quirkiest political traditions. Presidential aspirants make their campaign pitch but also flip pork chops at a grill sponsored by the state’s pork industry, pay homage to a sculpture of a cow made of 600 pounds of butter and eat their share of fried foods — all while navigating hecklers and a media throng.It doesn’t always go as planned: In 2007, Mitt Romney flipped his chop into the gravel. (He lost the caucuses that year but won the party’s nomination four years later.) And in 2015, Donald J. Trump, walking through the fair in a navy blazer and buffed white dress shoes, offered rides at random to handfuls of Iowa children in his helicopter parked nearby. (He, too, lost the caucus but won the nomination.)Five months before the 2024 caucuses, Iowa has already emerged as a make-or-break contest in this race. With Mr. Trump leading by a double-digit margin, the state represents the best opportunity for his rivals to stop his march to the nomination. If one of them can take him down — or even come close to beating him — it would show cracks in his support and potentially undercut the narrative that he still has a stranglehold on the Republican base. If Mr. Trump wins in Iowa, party strategists say, it will be difficult to slow his momentum, particularly as the race broadens out to states across the country.Friday’s lineup at the fair is a list of Republican candidates who have been struggling to break into the top tier of the nomination race, including former Vice President Mike Pence, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, Mayor Francis X. Suarez of Miami and Larry Elder, the conservative commentator.Several candidates are scheduled to deliver speeches at the political soapbox, a small podium open to the public and sponsored by the Des Moines Register. Others will participate in public Q. and A. sessions with Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, opting for a more scripted encounter with a fellow Republican.While Saturday will bring Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida to the event, the Friday attendees are likely to enjoy a day basking in the Iowa attention without the former president stealing the show. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Trump’s Political Orbit, Amid Spiraling Legal Bills, Faces a Cash Crunch

      by

      The former president’s political orbit, including the super PAC that backs him, is already spending more than it is taking in — an unusual trajectory this far out from an election.Donald J. Trump’s legal problems aren’t just piling up — his legal bills are, too.New financial reports show that the former president’s various political committees and the super PAC backing him have used roughly 30 cents of every dollar spent so far this year on legal-related costs. The total amounts to more than $27 million in legal fees and other investigation-related bills in the first six months of 2023, according to a New York Times analysis of federal records. That $27 million in legal costs includes Mr. Trump paying at least eight law firms more than $1 million each in the first half of 2023, part of a sizable set of legal billings expected to spiral upward in the coming months as his overlapping criminal cases wind their way toward courtrooms in New York, Florida and Washington, D.C.The new disclosures revealed the remarkable degree to which Mr. Trump’s political and legal cash are intermingled, much like his own political and legal fate.Mr. Trump’s complex political orbit is already spending more than it is taking in, and tapping into money it raised years ago — an unusual trajectory this far out from an election. And the burn rate raises questions about whether such an approach is untenable, or whether Mr. Trump will eventually need to dip into his own fortune to pay for his lawyers, his 2024 campaign or both.It is a step that the famously tightfisted Mr. Trump has resisted taking, even as his advisers have begun planning behind the scenes for a potential political cash crunch months before the primaries begin.Mr. Trump is not known for long-term planning, so it remains unclear how much he has focused on the intricate challenges of financing his campaign in the coming months. Some close to him say they are reassured by the fact that if he becomes the presidential nominee again, he can rely on the Republican Party to provide financial support. “President Trump continues to be the campaign fund-raising leader due to the support from voters who recognize this as an illegal witch-hunt,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, in a statement. “As President Trump has said, he will spend whatever it takes to defeat the Deep State and Crooked Joe Biden.”All told, the political committees that Mr. Trump directly controls, along with the independently operated super PAC devoted exclusively to helping him, are spending more than they raised so far in 2023 — largely because of his legal expenditures, the filings show.Those entities brought in $67.2 million in new donations in the first half of the year and spent about $90 million in the same period. Most of the money that went to legal fees did not come from new donations, the records show. Save America, the PAC doing the bulk of the legal spending, raised much of its funds in the aftermath of the 2020 election and plunged $16 million into legal expenses in 2022. It’s nearly been bled dry.“This is going to be an incredibly expensive proposition,” said Ben Brafman, a prominent criminal defense lawyer who is not involved in Mr. Trump’s cases. Of Mr. Trump’s three indictments, he added, “Not only is he now dealing with three separate jurisdictions, and nobody really knows which case is going to come first, but they all need to be investigated, researched and prepared at the same time by his attorneys.”Trump Entities Have Plunged Millions Into Legal ExpensesData is for Jan. 1 through June 30. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      LIV Golf Has Embraced Trump, but Others Are Keeping Their Distance

      by

      LIV Golf has embraced the former president. But much of golf’s establishment is keeping its distance, even as LIV and the PGA Tour seek a détente.Walking toward a tee box in Virginia in May, former President Donald J. Trump offered an awfully accurate assessment of the way many golf executives viewed him.“They love the courses,” he said, forever the salesman for his family company’s portfolio of properties, “but I think they probably consider me a little bit controversial right now.”As much as some leaders of men’s golf are trying to patch the rupture created by the Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit, a tour Trump has championed, they seem to be in no rush to end the former president’s exile from their sport’s buttoned-up establishment. Even in an era of gaudy wealth and shifting alliances in golf, Trump remains, for now, a measure too much for many.The consequences have been conspicuous for a figure who had expected to host a men’s golf major tournament in 2022. Now, his ties to the sport’s elite ranks often appear limited to LIV events and periodic rounds with past and present professionals. Jack Nicklaus, the 18-time major champion, caused a stir in April when he publicly stopped short of again endorsing a Trump bid for the White House.Nevertheless, on Thursday, when he was playing a LIV pro-am event at his course in Bedminster, N.J., Trump insisted he was in regular conversations with golf executives about top-tier tournaments.“They think as long as you’re running for office or in office, you’re controversial,” he said.Golf has been a regular respite for Democratic and Republican commanders in chief. But no American president has had a more openly combustible history with the sport than Trump, and perhaps no president besides Dwight D. Eisenhower, who is thought to have averaged about 100 rounds annually when he was in the White House, has had so much of his public image linked to golf.In the years before Trump won the presidency, he had at last started to make significant headway into the rarefied realms of golf.Trump watched his shot from the fairway.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIn 2012, the U.S. Golf Association picked the Bedminster property for the 2017 U.S. Women’s Open. Two years later, the P.G.A. of America said it planned to take the men’s P.G.A. Championship to the course in 2022. Also in 2014, Trump bought Turnberry, a mesmerizing Scottish property that had hosted four British Opens, and he imagined golf’s oldest major championship being contested there again.Once in the White House, Trump played with a parade of golf figures (though some of them appeared more attracted to the magic of the presidency than to Trump himself): Tiger Woods; Rory McIlroy; Ernie Els; Jay Monahan, the commissioner of the PGA Tour; and Fred S. Ridley, the chairman of Augusta National Golf Club.Trump’s 2016 campaign and presidency had given some in golf heartburn. But it was the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol that most clearly chiseled away at his golf dreams. The P.G.A., which is distinct from the PGA Tour, which has dueled with LIV for supremacy over men’s professional golf, immediately moved its 2022 championship from Bedminster. The R&A, which organizes the British Open, made clear that it would not be bound for Turnberry anytime soon.LIV soon emerged as something of a life raft, an insurgent league with a craving for championship-quality courses and plenty of money to spend. It did not hurt that Trump had been strikingly cozy with the government in Riyadh whose wealth fund was ready to pour billions of dollars into LIV — and let some of those dollars, in turn, roll toward the Trump Organization for reasons that have been the subject of widespread speculation.Trump became a fixture at LIV events held at his courses, routinely jawing about the PGA Tour with variable accuracy. (He did, however, predict something like the planned transaction between the wealth fund and the PGA Tour.) This week’s event in New Jersey is his family’s fourth LIV tournament, and a fifth is planned for the Miami area in October.But the budding détente between the Saudis and the PGA Tour does not seem to be leading to an immediate one between Trump and the broader golf industry, which the Saudis could have enormous sway over in the years ahead.The PGA Tour has not publicly committed to maintaining the LIV brand if it reaches a conclusive deal with the wealth fund, and the tentative agreement says nothing about the future of men’s golf’s relationship with Trump. The PGA Tour has a history with Trump but ended its relationship with his company during the 2016 campaign. Tim Finchem, who was the tour’s commissioner then, denied at the time that the decision was “a political exercise” and instead called it “fundamentally a sponsorship issue.”To no one’s surprise, the tour’s 2024 schedule, which the circuit released on Monday, features no events at Trump properties. And although Trump said a few months ago that he thought the Irish Open might be interested in his Doonbeg course, the DP World Tour, which is also a part of the agreement with the Saudi wealth fund, has said the course is not under consideration.Other top golf figures who are not bound by any deal with the Saudis somehow appear even less interested.Trump Turnberry in Scotland won’t be hosting the British Open anytime soon, according to the chief executive of the R&A.Mary Turner for The New York Times“Until we’re confident that any coverage at Turnberry would be about golf, about the golf course and about the championship, until we’re confident about that, we will not return any of our championships there,” Martin Slumbers, the chief executive of the R&A, said on the same day last month when he signaled that the Open organizer might be willing to accept a Saudi investment.Seth Waugh, the P.G.A. of America’s chief executive, declined to comment this week, but the organization has given no signal that it is reconsidering its thinking about Trump courses. The U.S.G.A. said it did not have a comment.Some players, many of whom at least lean conservative, have suggested they would like to see Trump courses be in the mix for the majors.“There’s no reason you couldn’t host P.G.A.s, U.S. Opens out here,” said Patrick Reed, who won the Masters Tournament in 2018 and played with Trump on Thursday. “I mean, just look at it out here: The rough is brutal.”Even a sudden rapprochement, which would require executives setting aside the views of players like Reed that politics should not shape sports decisions, would almost certainly not lead to Trump’s strutting around a major tournament in the near future.The next U.S. Open in need of a venue is the one that will be played in 2036; Trump would turn 90 on the Saturday of that tournament. P.G.A. Championships are booked through 2030. Between last month’s announcement that the 2026 British Open will be held at Royal Birkdale and the R&A’s sustained public skepticism of Trump, the last major of the calendar year seems unlikely to head to a Trump property anytime soon. And the Masters, which is always played at Augusta National in Georgia, is not an option.Women’s golf offers a few more theoretical possibilities since its roster of venues is not as set, but Trump would face much of the same reluctance.Trump has mused about the financial wisdom of golf’s keeping its distance from him. A few months ago, he argued that avoiding his courses was “foolish because you make a lot of money with controversy.”He may be right.But it seems golf is reasoning that it is making plenty of money anyway. Its political bent, some figure, might be better managed outside the glare of its major tournaments — and, moreover, beyond the shadow of Trump.Trump has mused about the financial wisdom of golf’s keeping its distance from him. Doug Mills/The New York Times More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Conservative Case Emerges to Disqualify Trump for Role on Jan. 6

      by

      Two law professors active in the Federalist Society wrote that the original meaning of the 14th Amendment makes Donald Trump ineligible to hold government office.Two prominent conservative law professors have concluded that Donald J. Trump is ineligible to be president under a provision of the Constitution that bars people who have engaged in an insurrection from holding government office. The professors are active members of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group, and proponents of originalism, the method of interpretation that seeks to determine the Constitution’s original meaning.The professors — William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas — studied the question for more than a year and detailed their findings in a long article to be published next year in The University of Pennsylvania Law Review.“When we started out, neither of us was sure what the answer was,” Professor Baude said. “People were talking about this provision of the Constitution. We thought: ‘We’re constitutional scholars, and this is an important constitutional question. We ought to figure out what’s really going on here.’ And the more we dug into it, the more we realized that we had something to add.”He summarized the article’s conclusion: “Donald Trump cannot be president — cannot run for president, cannot become president, cannot hold office — unless two-thirds of Congress decides to grant him amnesty for his conduct on Jan. 6.”A law review article will not, of course, change the reality that Mr. Trump is the Republican front-runner and that voters remain free to assess whether his conduct was blameworthy. But the scope and depth of the article may encourage and undergird lawsuits from other candidates and ordinary voters arguing that the Constitution makes him ineligible for office.“There are many ways that this could become a lawsuit presenting a vital constitutional issue that potentially the Supreme Court would want to hear and decide,” Professor Paulsen said.Mr. Trump has already been indicted twice in federal court, in connection with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his retention of classified documents. He is also facing charges relating to hush money payments in New York and may soon be indicted in Georgia in a second election case.Those cases could give rise to prison time or other criminal punishment. The provision examined in the new article concerns a different question: whether Mr. Trump is eligible to hold office.There is, the article said, “abundant evidence” that Mr. Trump engaged in an insurrection, including by setting out to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, trying to alter vote counts by fraud and intimidation, encouraging bogus slates of competing electors, pressuring the vice president to violate the Constitution, calling for the march on the Capitol and remaining silent for hours during the attack itself.“It is unquestionably fair to say that Trump ‘engaged in’ the Jan. 6 insurrection through both his actions and his inaction,” the article said.Steven G. Calabresi, a law professor at Northwestern and Yale and a founder of the Federalist Society, called the article “a tour de force.”But James Bopp Jr., who has represented House members whose candidacies were challenged under the provision, said the authors “have adopted a ridiculously broad view” of it, adding that the article’s analysis “is completely anti-historical.”(Mr. Bopp’s clients have had mixed success in cases brought under the provision. A state judge, assuming that the Jan. 6 attacks were an insurrection and that participating in them barred candidates from office, ruled that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, had not taken part in or encouraged the attacks after she took an oath to support the Constitution on Jan 3. A federal appeals court ruled against Representative Madison Cawthorn, Republican of North Carolina, on one of his central arguments, but the case was rendered moot by his loss in the 2022 primary.)The provision in question is Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Adopted after the Civil War, it bars those who had taken an oath “to support the Constitution of the United States” from holding office if they then “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”Congress can remove the prohibition, the provision says, but only by a two-thirds vote in each House.The new article examined the historical evidence illuminating the meaning of the provision at great length, using the methods of originalism. It drew on, among other things, contemporaneous dictionary definitions, other provisions of the Constitution using similar language, “the especially strong evidence from 1860s Civil War era political and legal usage of nearly the precise same terms” and the early enforcement of the provision.The article concluded that essentially all of that evidence pointed in the same direction: “toward a broad understanding of what constitutes insurrection and rebellion and a remarkably, almost extraordinarily, broad understanding of what types of conduct constitute engaging in, assisting, or giving aid or comfort to such movements.”It added, “The bottom line is that Donald Trump both ‘engaged in’ ‘insurrection or rebellion’ and gave ‘aid or comfort’ to others engaging in such conduct, within the original meaning of those terms as employed in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.”Though the provision was devised to address the aftermath of the Civil War, it was written in general terms and continues to have force, the article said. Congress granted broad amnesties in 1872 and 1898. But those acts were retrospective, the article said, and did not limit Section 3’s prospective force. (A federal appeals court agreed last year in the case involving Mr. Cawthorn.)The provision’s language is automatic, the article said, establishing a qualification for holding office no different in principle from the Constitution’s requirement that only people who are at least 35 years old are eligible to be president.“Section 3’s disqualification rule may and must be followed — applied, honored, obeyed, enforced, carried out — by anyone whose job it is to figure out whether someone is legally qualified to office,” the authors wrote. That includes election administrators, the article said.Professor Calabresi said those administrators must act. “Trump is ineligible to be on the ballot, and each of the 50 state secretaries of state has an obligation to print ballots without his name on them,” he said, adding that they may be sued for refusing to do so.(Professor Calabresi has occasionally strayed from conservative orthodoxy, leading to an unusual request from the group he helped found. “I have been asked not to talk to any journalist who identifies me as a co-founder of the Federalist Society, even though it is a historical fact,” he said. I noted the request and ignored it.)Some of the evidence the article considered overlapped with what was described in the recent indictment of Mr. Trump accusing him of conspiring to subvert the 2020 election. But that case and Section 3 address “completely separate questions,” Professor Baude said.“The question of should Donald Trump go to jail is entrusted to the criminal process,” he said. “The question of should he be allowed to take the constitutional oath again and be given constitutional power again is not a question given to any jury.” More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      What Is the Iowa State Fair and Why Does It Matter?

      by

      The Iowa State Fair is one of the most famous stops in a presidential campaign, known for delivering the kind of memorable moments that can define a candidacy.The fair, which attracts about a million people over ten days, amounts to a political obstacle course for candidates, who must woo voters in unscripted interactions, flip a pork chop for the cameras, deliver their stump speeches in a public forum and — most treacherously of all — eat fair food while avoiding unflattering photographs. It all happens before the hundreds of thousands of Iowa voters visiting the fair, throngs of reporters and banks of televisions cameras.And it can easily go very wrong.In 1987, Joe Biden lifted passages of a speech by British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock without attribution, adding to questions of plagiarism that ultimately lead to his early withdrawal from the race.In 2004, John Kerry, one of the country’s richest lawmakers who had been struggling to show he connected with regular voters, ordered a strawberry smoothie — a choice that had his aides scrambling to find a corn dog.And in 2012, Mitt Romney responded to a heckler with the line, “Corporations are people, my friend.” The comment came to be a shorthand for Democratic attacks that he sided with business over American workers.These kinds of moments can create narratives that become cemented in the public perceptions of the candidates — even when the facts may be slightly off. In 2007, Senator Fred Thompson, who ran for the Republican nomination, traveled the fair in a golf cart and, allegedly, $500 Gucci loafers. Years later, Mr. Thompson insisted that he did not own the shoes.This year, all the major Republican presidential candidates, except former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, are expected to attend. The biggest showdown is expected to be on Saturday, when both former President Donald Trump and his major rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, will be circulating through the fairgrounds.Mr. DeSantis will participate in a conversation with Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa. Mr. Trump is skipping the organized events to attend with an entourage of endorsers not from Iowa but Florida — a dig at Mr. DeSantis. It’s the kind of unconventional approach Mr. Trump has taken to the event in the past. In 2015, he caused a media frenzy when he landed his helicopter near the fairgrounds and offered rides to children. More

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Unsafe Roads: The Perils of Riding E-Bikes

      by

      More from our inbox:Why Indictments Boost Trump’s PopularityRename the Audubon SocietyRon DeSantis, BullyAshely Kingsley and her daughter, Scout, at Charlie’s Electric Bike store in Encinitas, where they were renting e-bikes for the day.Ariana Drehsler for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Teenagers’ Accidents Expose the Risks of E-Bikes” (front page, July 31):While it is clear that stronger regulation around the speeds of e-bikes is needed, roadway design determines the safety of our communities.What we are seeing is the deadly consequences of a system built for cars and cars only. As one of the people quoted in the article notes, the bikes’ speed is “too fast for sidewalks, but it’s too slow to be in traffic.”In a better system, bikes and cars would not have to share the road, and our roads would be designed to accommodate the reality that people get around in different ways, and everyone deserves to get around safely.Bikes are not motorcycles, and they should not be treated as if they were. These crashes are happening because people on bikes are forced to use unsafe roadways around cars that are often going too fast.Earl BlumenauerPortland, Ore.The writer, a member of Congress, is the founder and co-chair of the Congressional Bicycle Caucus.To the Editor:I have been riding motorcycles since 1972. One of the first things you learn, either from hard experience or from older riders, is that you are invisible to most traffic. They aren’t looking for you, so they don’t see you. E-bikes are even smaller, so the problem is likely worse.I rode one of the faster e-bikes about a month ago. It had a top speed of 35 miles per hour and was much closer to being a motorcycle than a bicycle. Parents, law enforcement and legislators need to wake up to that reality.Dale LeppoHudson, OhioTo the Editor:While “Teenagers’ Accidents Expose the Risks of E-Bikes” demonstrates the need for safety in planning and organizing the e-bike rollout, I think it’s important to note that the deaths and injuries cited are due to car drivers, not e-bike riders.As the article states, 15-year-old Brodee Champlain “did everything right,” including signaling to make a left turn, before a driver hit him. To frame such accidents as the fault of the e-bike is blaming the victim rather than the cause.Nor is this a problem that will be helped by slowing the introduction of e-bikes to our streets. The fewer people driving cars, the fewer e-bike accidents there will be.The best way, then, to make cyclists safer is to build up the cycling infrastructure and substantively change our cities’ car-centric design, rather than trying to regulate e-bikes around two-ton vehicles that are far deadlier.Charles BonkowskySalt Lake CityThe writer is an intern at the Salt Lake City Sustainability Department.To the Editor:As a former New Yorker, I thought I was accustomed to the perils of pedestrians when out and about, but I had a rude awakening upon moving to Southern California, where e-bikes are ubiquitous. The amazing climate and hilly terrain make it easy to understand why e-bikes have become so popular here, and they provide a handy alternative form of transportation for kids with busy parents.But seeing young people, often preteens, zip around at 30-plus miles an hour while looking at their phones or drinking a soda makes me concerned for the pedestrians who share the sidewalks with them and for the kids themselves.Regulation is needed before more lives are lost.Leigh JonesAliso Viejo, Calif.Why Indictments Boost Trump’s Popularity Mark Peterson for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Each Indictment Solidifies Trump’s Base,” by Rich Lowry (Opinion guest essay, Aug. 8):Mr. Lowry points out that Donald Trump’s recent indictments have enhanced his popularity with the Republican base.It is not that his supporters like him despite his wrongdoing; they adore him specifically because he thumbs his nose at the laws, rules and institutions that are the basis for our democracy. They are angry at the status quo and the foundational aspects of our government, and Mr. Trump appears anathema to what they perceive as the “deep state.”Mr. Lowry glosses over the Russia investigation and claims that in the end Mr. Trump was “vindicated.” This is nonsense. A clear case was made that Mr. Trump obstructed justice in the Mueller inquiry. Since he was never indicted for his attempts to thwart that investigation, he continued to obstruct justice in the cases for which he will now have to appear before a judge and jury.The next two years will test this nation in many ways because of the actions of Donald Trump.Ellen Silverman PopperQueensTo the Editor:During every campaign Republican politicians and pundits like Rich Lowry pound their fists and scream about “law and order!” But when it comes to Donald Trump’s rampant criminality, they promote every excuse in the book not to hold him accountable — the most ridiculous one being that it will just make him more popular with the MAGA crowd.We’ve heard that since the day Mr. Trump boasted about hypothetically shooting a person on Fifth Avenue with no loss of support. We’ve heard it a thousand times. His supporters’ sense of perpetual grievance is being fanned daily on Fox and Breitbart and even in the pages of Mr. Lowry’s publication, National Review.Mr. Lowry should have used his essay not to reinforce predictable right-wing talking points, but to persuade people on his side of the aisle that these indictments are not only appropriate, but absolutely critical to a healthy, functioning democracy.Bud LaveryHighland, N.Y.Rename the Audubon Society Hannah Beier for The New York TimesTo the Editor:“Rising Racial Tensions Shake a Tranquil Pastime” (front page, Aug. 9) reports on a feud within the National Audubon Society, including “the question of whether the conservation group should drop its eponym, John James Audubon, who owned slaves.”I grew up worshiping the Audubon “brand” as a youthful birder, spent the better part of 20 years on the staff of the Audubon Society, and have studied and written about the life of John James Audubon. (Parts of a biographical sketch I wrote are still found on the Audubon.org website.)Here’s why I think the Audubon name should be dropped.It is essential in 2023 that we welcome birders of every background to the movement. The future of conservation depends on it. Social justice and conservation are deeply intertwined; they point to a sustainable future. And names are just a cultural artifact. There is no compelling reason to keep the Audubon name, just as we wouldn’t do for other enslavers and Confederate generals.I have a suggestion: Rename it the American Society for the Protection of Birds, to borrow a page from our friends across the pond in the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Problem solved.Fred BaumgartenHaydenville, Mass.Ron DeSantis, BullyGov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, speaking in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, this month.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “DeSantis Suspends a 2nd Elected Prosecutor in Florida, a Democrat in Orlando” (news article, Aug. 10):Our hapless governor and would-be president, Ron DeSantis, goes back to the only thing that’s consistently worked for him: bullying.David ReddyTampa, Fla. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Says He Won’t Sign Loyalty Pledge Required for G.O.P. Debate

      by

      The Republican National Committee has demanded that 2024 contenders pledge to support the eventual nominee in order to debate. The former president is refusing.Former President Donald J. Trump said on Wednesday that he was unwilling to meet one of the requirements to participate in the first Republican presidential debate, refusing to sign a pledge to support the eventual nominee.“I wouldn’t sign the pledge,” he said in an interview with the conservative outlet Newsmax. “Why would I sign a pledge? There are people on there that I wouldn’t have.”The decision would seem to rule out the possibility of him being at the debate on Aug. 23, yet he also said that he would announce next week whether he planned to take part.Asked for comment on Thursday, the Republican National Committee, which sets the rules, referred to past interviews in which its chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, has defended the pledge and said the committee will hold everyone to it.“The rules aren’t changing,” she said on CNN last month. “We’ve been very vocal with them.”In the Newsmax interview, Mr. Trump said, “I can name three or four people that I wouldn’t support for president,” without naming them. “So right there, there’s a problem right there.”Mr. Trump also said in the interview that he wasn’t convinced it was worth it for him to debate given how far ahead he is in the primary. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed him leading the field by an enormous margin, more than 35 percentage points ahead of his nearest competitor, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.“Why would you do that when you’re leading by so much?” he asked.Some other Republicans criticized Mr. Trump on Thursday for his refusal to commit to supporting a nominee other than himself. “Every Republican running for President would be better than Joe Biden,” Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia said on Twitter. “Any candidate who does not commit to supporting the eventual nominee is putting themselves ahead of the future of our country.”Mr. Trump’s vacillation over the pledge is not new; he objected to signing the same loyalty pledge during his first campaign eight years ago. He ultimately did, but then took it back.That history underscores that the pledge is, in practice, unenforceable. Party leaders can refuse to let a candidate debate for not signing, but they can’t force someone who does sign to actually support another nominee next year.One of Mr. Trump’s opponents, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, has said that he will sign the pledge, but that he would not support Mr. Trump if he is the eventual nominee: “I’m going to take the pledge just as seriously as Donald Trump took it in 2016,” he told CNN.Another opponent, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, has suggested that — if he otherwise qualifies for the debate, which he hasn’t yet — he would sign based on the far-from-safe assumption that Mr. Trump won’t be the nominee and Mr. Hutchinson won’t actually be tested. More

    • 63 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      How to Beat Donald Trump

      by

      Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat and Listen to and follow ‘Matter of Opinion’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicDonald Trump was impeached twice. He has been indicted three times. He lost the 2020 election. And yet he’s the clear Republican front-runner for 2024.Today on “Matter of Opinion,” Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat and Carlos Lozada explore how Trump has created a winning political strategy and what his potential nomination could mean for Joe Biden, the Republican Party and the future of the country.Illustration by The New York Times; photograph by Scott Eisen/Getty ImagesMentioned in this episode:“The Normal Paths to Beating Trump Are Closing,” by Ross Douthat for The New York Times“The Right Way to Resist Trump,” by Luigi Zingales in The New York Times“Rules for Resistance: Advice From Around the Globe for the Age of Trump,” by David Cole and Melanie Wachtell Stinnett“Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025,” by Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman for The New York Times“So Help Me God,” by Mike Pence“The Imperial Presidency,” by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.Thoughts? Email us at matterofopinion@nytimes.com.Follow our hosts on X: Michelle Cottle (@mcottle), Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) and Carlos Lozada (@CarlosNYT).“Matter of Opinion” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Sophia Alvarez Boyd and Derek Arthur. Edited by Stephanie Joyce. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Original music by Isaac Jones, Efim Shapiro, Carole Sabouraud, Sonia Herrero and Pat McCusker. Our fact-checking team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Annie-Rose Strasser. More